


In the Dark

by lovetincture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-fic Coda, Psychological Trauma, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:06:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22842211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: No one wants to hear about the ways salvation fucking blows. There’s a right and a wrong way to be a victim of anything. People like their survivors tough but not too tough, sad but not angry. Steel with just enough blood oozing around the edges to prove that it’s human. That’s not a moral to the story. If it’s anything, it’s a fucking joke.Sam and Dean share a hotel room. There's more than one way not to talk about it.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 166





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [road_rhythm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/road_rhythm/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Another Brick in the Wall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3207755) by [road_rhythm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/road_rhythm/pseuds/road_rhythm). 



> I read Another Brick in the Wall and just loved it beyond words, so I wrote this little coda for it. This fic picks up right where that one ends. Thank you so much to road_rhythm for letting me play in their sandbox and just generally being an all around lovely person writing kickass fics. <3

It’s not better in the aftermath. Leave the hospital, ditch the cops, live in a body that’s not actively trying to die. He’s stable. He’s heard that word a lot. Recovering, there’s another one. There’s a lot of things this could be and a lot of things it isn’t.

It’s  _ not starving, _ for one. It’s light (too much), movement (how does anyone), and sound (incessant, horrible, pounding in all the time). How do you talk about the horror of being alive when so many people aren’t?

_ (You can’t _

_ so you don’t) _

No one wants to hear about the ways salvation fucking blows. There’s a right and a wrong way to be a victim of anything. People like their survivors tough but not too tough, sad but not angry. Steel with just enough blood oozing around the edges to prove that it’s human. That’s not a moral to the story. If it’s anything, it’s a fucking joke.

But everything in Sam’s body hurts too much for jokes, so it can’t be that either. The comedown off the Ativan is awful. His head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. His thoughts trickle like slow-moving water through a pipe. He wonders if

He startles awake. He hadn’t realized he was sleeping.

Dean is in the next bed, lying perfectly still. There’s not so much as a rustle from the sheets, but Sam knows he’s awake. His breathing is too fast, loud and ragged in the quiet room. Sam thinks of calling out to him, and the words get stuck in his throat.

He mouths the word instead, brittle-cracked lips forming it like a prayer. Like a funeral rite. Dean doesn’t hear him; of course he doesn’t.

He turns over and stares open-eyed into the dark.

“Sam?”

His breath stutters, catches in his throat. There’s a word perched on the tip of his tongue, the most important word, but he still can’t say it.

There’s a rustle of bedclothes, then the dull, padded sound of feet hitting the ground. Sam can hear Dean reaching for the bedside lamp and dreads the blinding light.

“I’m alright,” he manages, hunkering down in the covers, squeezing his eyes shut tight.

The rustling stops. The light doesn’t come. Somewhere deep below ground, water moves through a pipe.

drip

It starts up again, a susurrus of cheap cotton backed by the groan of a tired box spring. His mouth has gone dry. Anticipation, terror, hangover, who can say?

Dean’s footsteps are quiet on the carpet. Sam can hear them if he strains his ears, but he’s too tired to bother—tired and aching in the aftermath of being stuffed to the gills with drugs  _ (stupid)— _ so it’s surprise and not surprise when Dean’s weight lands on the edge of his bed.

Is it still a surprise if the question is when and why, but not how? And never _who._ _Who_ is the control in the experiment of their lives, the unchanging constant.

He’s delirious, even he knows that. His thoughts aren’t making sense. They sift through his fingers like beading mercury, as silvery-bright and toxic.

There’s no  _ because _ to this. All roads end here. They always have, again and again, through fire and brimstone, hell and shit and other people. They always will.

Won’t they?

drip

drip

The motel room smells faintly of smoke. Smoke and mildew and stale, recycled air. The AC drones dimly in the corner as Dean stops beside his bed. Sam knows him by sound and scent if not by sight, knows him even with his eyes closed, and then Dean is pulling the covers back and sliding in beside him.

He doesn’t tense up. He doesn’t do much of anything at all, doesn’t move over to make room, which means Dean ends up pressed tightly to his side, not quite spooning but lying close enough to share the same air. Sam catalogues all the places where their bodies touch, the press of arms, hips, thighs.

He expects Dean to tell him to move over, to quit hogging the bed. He expects a crack about his bony shoulders, something. Anything. Dean is a dick, and Sam gets irritated—that’s how it goes. He reaches for it, comforting as a mirage. He can almost taste the irritation at the back of his throat. He  _ craves  _ it. Instead he gets the brackish taste of post-nasal drip, burning eyes full of unshed tears.

Dean doesn’t make any smart comments, but he does wrap his arm around Sam slowly, haltingly. Like gentling a spooked animal.

Sam resents it all over.

Dean slings a leg over his, pressing his nose into the crook of Sam’s neck. He’s heavier than Sam remembers, and Sam closes his eyes. Opens them again. The room isn’t all that dark—no such thing as dark this close to the road. The occasional car hums by, but they’re few and far between.

It’s night again. He slept all day.

They have places to go, things to do. The feeling of Dean weighting him down is as comforting as it is horrifying. Every touch still feels like crackling electricity, like blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. The front of Dean’s boxers is wet against Sam’s thigh, and maybe it’s the shock of the thing, the sheer dirt of it that shakes Sam’s tongue loose.

“Is that jizz on my leg?”

He doesn’t think he imagines it, that Dean’s breath stops for the barest hint of a second. “Yeah.”

“Oh.”

He doesn’t know why this is so awkward. It never used to be awkward. He never used to feel this cold. Cold even through the scratchy motel comforter, even with Dean wrapped around him like a goddamn boa constrictor. It’s a reminder, all of it. He can’t get  _ away _ from the reminders  _ tripping blind in the luminous half light of ecto, Lucifer’s voice in his ear, the beating of wings inside his skull and an insidious itch followed by fire followed by pain, oily thick smoke choking his lungs seeping into the deepest parts of him—  _

He doesn’t realize until Dean makes a small sound that he’s been digging his fingers into the flesh of his brother’s arm. When he realizes it, he doesn’t let go. He grips tighter, pressing his fingers into taut muscle in a way that will surely bruise, just to see if he can. To feel the strength in his own fingers and to know that he’s  _ here. _

Dean lets him. He lets him and doesn’t say a word about the pinching, twisting grip of Sam’s fingers in his flesh, nor the way Sam wriggles out from under him and heaves his weight so he’s laying atop Dean. He can feel his body rising and falling with each inhale and exhale of Dean’s lungs. Their faces are close but not touching. He can smell the faint hint of mint on Dean’s breath, the staleness starting to creep in from however long he’s laid there in bed.

He thinks of Dean, hand wrapped around his dick, bringing himself off while Sam turned in his sleep, fending off fitful dreams. He wonders what Dean thinks about. He tries to swallow down the bitter burn of resentment creeping up his throat.

It would be so easy to press their lips together.

He doesn’t.

He does bury his face in Dean’s neck, taking deep, shuddering breaths that he doesn’t bother trying to hide. He’s not crying, exactly. He’s not exactly doing anything when he mouths aimlessly at Dean’s neck. He thinks of animals seeking comfort in the dark, looking for mother as he rasps his tongue over the warm, solid stretch of skin at his lips. Dean tastes like salt layered over the faint chemical tang of hotel soap.

Dean groans. His hands fly to Sam’s hips, but gently. Carefully, like he’s afraid Sam will break under his fingers.

_ “Harder,” _ Sam growls because fuck that. Fuck Dean. He’d crushed a man’s windpipe with his bare hands. He exorcised a vengeful spirit with nothing but the brightness of his rage. He’s not going to break because his big brother stops treating him like he’s made of glass for just one fucking minute. 

Dean hesitates, and Sam bites down, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to feel the give of tendons beneath his teeth. Enough to make Dean flex fingers against his hips, to make him gasp  _ “Sammy,” _ ragged and wanting as he finally,  _ finally _ grabs Sam like he wants. Like before. Like he’s solid and here and any of this is real.

Sam whines high and thin because  _ yes.  _ This. This is what he wants, what he’s missed. He rolls his hips against Dean, nevermind the cold patch of wetness between them, nevermind that Dean is still soft beneath him, that the small sounds he makes are pained—too sensitive, too much.

He doesn’t care. He’s ravenous in the dark, a feast of need and pain and everything that’s still fucking  _ wrong.  _ Everything that this won’t make right.

He takes and takes and takes, rutting up against Dean, sucking a bruise into his throat that will surely be livid by morning. Every movement is labored and slow, like moving through molasses, through the whining buzz in his head. It’s ugly and loud, skin slapping against skin. His own harsh pants fill the air, and Dean lies still beneath him, clinging tightly like he’s afraid to move, afraid this will break.

He wants to cry, or shout, or break it himself.

He’s riding the edge of hysteria, a horrible giggle bubbling up in his throat when he realizes he’s not sure he can come like this. Probably can’t. His thighs burn, and he’s just so fucking  _ tired. _ His barely-scabbed over port wounds sting when they scrape against Dean’s chest. He can feel them starting to ooze, blood running together with the thin sheen of sweat that makes the sheets cling in the worst possible way.

And then Dean says his name—says it hurt, says it reverent—and he can.

He comes with a muffled cry, something caught between a whimper and a sob. He collapses against Dean, twitching and shuddering, and he still can’t help but flinch when strong arms come up to circle his back.

He should feel safe, here. He should feel whole.

He still doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~I'm unlikely to write more SPN fics in the future, but if you dig Hannibal, weird kinky smut fics, and general screaming about cannibals in love,~~ you can come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture)!
> 
> Boy, was I ever wrong about that. The Supernatural fandom has swallowed me whole, and now I primarily write here, in a fannish context. However, you can still find me on Twitter!


End file.
